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The Strength Of Anger
Eddie Eckstein watched as the last of the Deadbeats drifted off to sleep. Calliope was laying with her head in his lap and he gently slid out from under her and slid a cushion under her head as a pillow. He stood, looked down at her a moment to admire how beautiful she was in repose. When awake she drove him crazy, they were always arguing about something, she always had some opinion she was absolutely certain of that she felt she had to batter him with… and he loved it with all his heart. But even so, asleep it was easier to appreciate how lovely she was. Her gentle and warm moments were rarely seen by the others even if Eddie could see them in her eyes no matter what was happening -even if she was in the middle of proclaiming for the seven hundredth time that she was Calliope the muse and that she knew a thing or two about music thank you very much - he could see her warm, bruised heart and her love for him. He drew his leather jacket tighter around him to prepare for the walk, then thought better of it and took it off, laying it over her, kissing her forehead. No harm in being cold for what’s coming. He went to the makeshift fireplace and laid a couple more logs on it for everyone and then started walking. He picked up his Axe, the guitar forged for him by Reginn the greatest smith of Asgard. Dawn was still just a possibility on the horizon as he stepped up onto the roof of The Cave, the warehouse gifted to The Deadbeats by Simon Prince in what many would regard as yet another extravagant act of largesse purely to show off his wealth, but Eddie knew to be one of his many awkward gestures of real friendship. He didn’t pause to tune the Axe, it required no tuning. Even encrusted with the blood and entrails of giantspawn or the malformed hordes of Loki it always played perfectly. A single power chord would shake any dirt or filth from it and leave it whole and clean again. But he hesitated before striking that power chord. Once he did that he’d have to start playing. And once he started playing he’d have to play the song. And to play the song he’d have to do something that frightened him more than anything else. When Eddie was assassinated by an agent of Loki he was brought to Asgard by Freija, now his beloved Valkyrie companion, the sister he never had. He journed with her through the underworld of Valhalla when Odin cast them down, and on the way they faced Hel herself, taking the form of a human-spider hybrid. Afraid of spiders since childhood Eddie nearly lost his mind at the horror of what he faced down there but he defeated Hel with a mighty throw of his makeshift spear, banished to some deeper realm of the underworld for now. Since that day Eddie was no longer troubled by fear. No enemy could frighten him like the spiders down in the dark, like the spider-goddess. Fear took many forms of course though, the God of Metal should know some things about feelings and he knew that. Just the same he could overcome this, he just had to get the nerve. He’d preserved all mammal life on earth by saving its definitive ancestor at the dawn of time (by kicking the crap out of a pterodactyl), he’d undertaken a mighty journey through the frozen lands of the Norsemen in 900 AD and defeated the Grendel himself. He’d taken the captain of the cheerleading squad to his junior prom and he fully intended to take the loveliest of all the muses, Calliope herself, to the senior prom. The man who could do all this -and man he was, he was a boy no longer from the day he made peace with his soulmate Calliope - could strike that power chord and begin the song. The chord rang true, somehow even that first note contained melancholy and longing and hope, but it was moments after the chord faded out that the real song began. “The Strength of Anger” had taken him months to write. He hadn’t consulted the other deadbeats, hadn’t even turned to Calliope to listen and give him her maddeningly accurate feedback. He’d written like he wrote during his 1,000 years in exile, from a place deep in his soul that contained more than the ecstasy of metal, more than the joy of a righteous battle, it contained the love and hope and compassion that made him worthy of the appellation The God Of Metal rather than just a boy who won it by chance. The song had no lyrics: it did not need them. To hear it was to know what it meant, to feel what it had to say. At least it was to Eddie and he hoped to one other person. He’d been playing for eleven of the song’s nineteen minutes when Modi arrived, materializing facing him on the roof. Modi looked as as angry as always and ready to fight, in fact angrier perhaps, missing his usual calculated, modulated rage. He let Eddie play though. Eddie looked Modi in the eyes as he played, furiously hurling note after note out into the world, his fingers and the guitar strings doing the very best thing they could do: not getting in the way as Eddie’s mighty heart told its tale. The song spoke of rage and of hurt, of the awful pain of loneliness and the battered, beleaguered sensation of a hope that you must never let go of, and finally of love. With Modi present Eddie decided to just keep playing, stretching the song’s end back into the beginning and through again to the end. The second playthrough was better than the first, Eddie was more sure of what he was saying, calmer in the face of his fears. Modi was silent when the song ended. Eddie removed the Axe, carried it in both of his hands as he walked to Modi. He didn’t fall to a knee but he bowed his head as he extended it to him, speaking quietly. “Forgive me brother, for thinking only of battle when I should have been thinking of family. Forgive me for not being your brother all these years. And forgive me for never having the courage until this morning, to tell you that I love you.” When he finished speaking Eddie stood still, his arms clasped at the wrist behind his back. Head a little bowed, waiting. The mighty Axe of the God of Metal in his brother’s hands, Eddie waited for it to fall, should his brother decide it. Modi’s voice cracked with pain - Eddie instinctively recognized the pain of a man who was attempting to feel emotions he was unfamiliar with or afraid of - as he spoke. “I love you too, brother,” Was all he said before he was unable to go on. The Axe was put aside, rested on the ground. Eddie stepped forward and put his right hand on Modi’s left shoulder. Modi almost pulled away but he bowed his head too, and they stood like that for a while before they began to talk. That is the story of how the Eddie Eckstein, God of Metal realized his destiny was not to defeat the God of Anger, but to bring him back into his family. Back to Stories Of The Metalverse